If you have read the microbe quorum sensing page you will have learnt that microbiological life in soil is the controller of everything.

It is the microbiology in soil that defines which seeds are to germinate.

The purpose of weeds is to correct soil problems. The common dandelion, “Taraxacum officinale” seems to thrive on bringing calcium back to the soil surface to become available as the plant decays.

Thistles thrive in compacted soils that are typically bacterially dominated.

There is a bible when it comes to weeds and it is called When Weeds talk by Jay L McCaman. We highly recommend you buying it.

Whenever we sow anything we are doing two things, 1. Putting a shovel in the ground to look at the soil and 2. Looking at the weeds and asking why are those weeds growing?

Weeds are an indicator of which minerals are both abundant and absent in the soil.

They tell us the other plants we need to put in the soil to replicate what these other weeds are doing. This allows us to change the  environment underground, feed the biology, and then improve soil health.

Our approach has changed over time we started out trying to spray kill weeds, this didn’t work, we tried pulling them out, this didn’t work, we mulched them and this too did not work long term. We came to the realization that all of these were band aid fixes and that we needed to change the environment.

To change the composition of soil we learnt that this had to be multifaceted, we had to follow the rules of Soil Health :-

1. Limited disturbance of soil
2. Armour – always keep soil covered
3. Diversity of plant and animal species
4. Living roots – maintain as long as possible
5. Integrated animals – nature does not function without animals (as intensive as possible for short periods of time).

And use biological stimulants. The key that defines the stimulants that you need to use can be found in the book when Weeds Talk. Here is as exert of the book:-